by Walter Pookrum

Preparing to raise money for people who need help paying their heating bills reminded me of my experience growing up in a household which could have used a heating grant or two.

I lived with seven siblings and three adults, only one of whom worked outside the home. There were times when, rather than heat coming from the baseboard registers we had whatever the oven could provide, as far as the oven could provide it - which wasn't too far.

The good news was that it promoted physical closeness.

This was also the bad news because the last thing 11 people in a four-bedroom house need is to be physically closer than they already always are. There was always somebody in the bathroom, always somebody on the phone - when it was on - which, by the way, was a party line, so that even in the unlikely event that somebody at our house wasn't on the phone, somebody at the house we shared the line with was always on the phone.

That party line was no party.

There was always somebody in the bedroom, which you shared with several other folks. I won't go into sleeping arrangements; let's just say it's a miracle somebody didn't catch a case.

Such as my uncle.

There was always somebody everywhere you went, inside or outside the house. On the back porch, under the back porch – which is where, by the way, we kids practiced smoking cigarettes, which were bought with change we "borrowed" from Mrs. Parks' purse. The Parkses lived down the street and had only one kid, so we figured she could afford to loan us the money.

The good thing about living in heat-circumference proximity to each other was that when my mother told us to go to our room we could say, "It's too cold in there!" and could thus continue to bicker, fight, and otherwise raise hell, until she decided she didn't care how cold it was: "In your room, dammit!"

Thank goodness the heat and gas weren't on one bill as they are now…and that we had an electric stove…and that the electricity was still on!

Speaking of the electric stove: electric ovens of that vintage had heating coils at the top and bottom of the oven which glowed red when the oven was turned up as high as it could go - which it had to be, of course, when it was playing the role of furnace. Our trash can was near the stove.

On this particular day, when my mother and grandmother (who lived with us) were particularly engrossed in one of their soap operas, there was another drama unfolding in the kitchen where - believe it or not - I was alone. Alone, except for a soap powder box atop the trash can; a detergent box with a flap which, I swear, whispered to me and compelled me to take it and touch the flap to the red-hot oven coils, just to see what would happen.

So I did.

As my ex will tell you, it's my nature not to know when to let well enough alone (or, as my grandmother used to say, "You run things into the ground and break them off!"). So I did it again and again, between commercials, allowing the flame to burn bigger each time, before the crescendo-ing organ music signaled the onset of a commercial - when I would shake the flame out, throw the box back atop the trash, and ease back into the living room before the commercial came on.

Speaking of soap operas, there were times when we kids would get home from school to find my mother and grandmother crying.
We'd say, "What's wrong?"
"So-and-so died."
"Who's that?"
"On Guiding Light" (or whatever the particular soap was).
Our eyes would roll back in our heads and we'd sigh in disbelief.

So it was no problem to ease out of the living room - where the television was - and into the kitchen, where the red-hot oven coils and that demon detergent box were.

Had I known when to quit, I would not have, one of these times, allowed the flap to burn too long to be extinguished by shaking it or blowing on it...or whatever else I could think to do before it was way past time to get back into the living room. Panicked, I threw the box into the trash can, flap aflame. As I sat there staring through the TV, I had enough sweat on my forehead to put any fire out. Somebody said, "I smell smoke!" and my mother and grandmother flew into the kitchen to find the trash ablaze and the side of the stove burned (consider the irony!).

They put the fire out and even though I took the Fifth, the fact that I had once provoked a neighbor's bog into biting me during the dog days of summer, requiring a trip to the emergency room, a rabies shot and several stitches; that I had once inserted my hand up to the armpit into the wringer apparatus of the washing machine; all that history, and the profuse sweat beads, were enough to convict me.

Actually, the perspiration alone was enough!

I was subjected to a swift and certain punishment. Without being specific, let's just say it's a miracle somebody didn't catch a case.

Such as my mother.

The point of this story is to emphasize the importance of contributions to THAW. Your contributions may very well keep some family's trash can from being set on fire - or worse - because there's no heat coming from the furnace.